When wiring a house, the type of wire used most often is NM wire or Romex wire. The phone wiring in your house joins your phones in parallel with a device formally called a Network Interface Device (NID), but often referred to as the demarc or demarcation point. Parallel to the cable was trolleyline, which powered the motor. The Americans made interesting plans, though, like the idea to suspend a rail upon which the motor runs, over the canal. Some other systems allowed for the passing of two barges without exchanging motors, even if the track was laid out only on one side of the canal. On the larger part of the canal trajectories in France, traction occurred only at one side of the canal. In France, tractors started slowly and gradually increased their speed in order not to get pulled into the water by the barge. To prevent the tractors from being pulled into the water by the barges, they were made very heavy, sometimes by using reinforced concrete.

The Germans started their experiments with common steam locomotives on the "Finow Canal" in 1890. The results were spectacular, these machines being able to tow 7 barges at a speed of 7 kilometres per hour (4.3 mph) without any noticeable wash created. A similar rack system designed by Wood was tested on a part of the Erie canal in 1903. The results were very positive: four loaded boats were hauled at a speed of 7.2 km/h (4.5 mph), compared to 2.8 km/h (1.75 mph) for a mule towing one barge, and this without threatening the banks. One exception was a short and partial service on the Erie canal in Ohio in 1900, over a distance of 67 kilometres (42 miles). In 1896, three years after the experiments with the Frank W. Hawley trolleyboat (described above), the Lamb system was tested on a 6 kilometre (3.7 miles) stretch of the Erie Canal (at Tonawanda) and on the Raritan Canal in New Jersey.

In 1898, the Lamb system was tested on the Finow Canal in Germany, but the Germans decided in favour of electric mules. Electrifying canals could boost this efficiency even further, bringing the possibility of a zero-emission transport system within reach. In the illustration below there is even a railway envisioned on top of the system. After World War One, even tanks and other military vehicles were used to tow barges (picture above), without much success. When two tractors going in opposite direction met, they switched barges and drove back to where they came from (one barge had to navigate over the sunken towline of the other). The towing of barges through sluices happened mainly by men, not by mules or horses, because it was a rather complicated task. Unfortunately, they calculated that to justify the expenditure, the canal required 3 times as much cargo volume, and that never happened. The idea was to use cheap electricity generated by the Niagara waterfalls, but eventually nothing happened.

They only saw limited use for unmanned mules, for instance in tunnels and in ports - an obvious advantage of most of these unmanned systems was that they kept the banks of the canal free. This method would have had the advantage of affording a direct pull, but the cost of construction would be substantially higher than with the other systems. Many different systems were designed and tested, of which the system invented by Richard Lamb became the best known (picture above). The Americans strongly believed that the unmanned mule was the best electrical system to propel canal boats, while the French and the Germans found the system to be rather problematic and were convinced that manned mules (their invention) were a much better option. It consisted of an unmanned electric mule, operated from the barge, riding on a rigid rail or rack, or suspended in the air on a cable, parallel to the canal - either on the banks or over the water. However, especially interesting are those systems in which traction happens on land instead of in the water (all systems excluding a propeller), because they are extremely energy-efficient. These days many canals have reinforced banks, so trolley systems with a propeller would no longer pose a problem.

If you beloved this article therefore you would like to get more info concerning what is electric cable nicely visit the web-page.